How useful is a single hour of impact consultancy?
Founder of Impact Forecast
Flipping the script
The old model expects a consultant to first understand your business before they can say anything meaningful. That means the real work begins only after several calls, background documents, and clarifications. As a result, more expert time is spent on orientation delivering insight.
We’ve learned that when innovators assess their own impact, with the right tools and skills, consultants can shift roles. Not having to calculate the impact from scratch, they can start at the deep and become sparring partners, reviewers, assistants and accelerators of the impact calculation. Before the call, the impact expert reviewed the Climate Impact Forecast, company profile and the specific request. This unlocks a new kind of expert meeting: focused on the company’s challenge and without any of the overhead.
Where do companies need impact expert support?
- 39% – Pre-validation coaching
- 24% – Modelling the innovation
- 15% – Filling impact data gaps
- 12% – Communicating the impact
- 10% – Improving the product or business model
(Data from 300 recent coaching calls)
The most common request, pre-validation coaching, is also the most advanced. These teams are close to validation and want a point-by-point sense-check to catch any issues before it counts. And it shows just how many founders now build their own Climate Impact Forecasts with confidence.
But not everyone’s at the same stage. A quarter of all calls focus on modelling the innovation, often from scratch. These sessions help founders translate complex tech into measurable impact. The rest seek help with specific pain points, whether that’s finding LCA data, improving their green claims, or rethinking product design to maximise positive outcomes. To what extent can these goals be met in one hour? We always ask entrepreneurs after coaching and 39% of them rated it 10/10, the average grade is an 8,7. They remarked:
“The help we received to define different options for the Functional Unit has been crucial”
“We now have a complete understanding of the model, the required data, and how the model applies specifically to our business and our process and comparisons.”
“I really liked the coaching and guidance in how best to simplify and understand what the real baseline numbers are”
What if an hour of impact expertise is insightful?
The implications of CIF coaching are more than an efficiency gain, and apply more broadly than to Climate Impact Forecasts. This way of working is a template for impact insights at scale. When impact data and expertise are an order of magnitude more accessible;
- More companies can make impact data driven decisions.
- More expertise is available, consultants deliver more value.
- Support shifts from generic advice to specific, contextual insight.
This redefines what we expect from “consultancy.” Not a lengthy engagement to define the question, but a well-placed moment of clarity. It’s not the hours that count, but overcoming the challenge. An hour of well-prepared, context-aware advice can deliver more than weeks of traditional support. This applies to LCA, ESG, GHG and other CO₂ and TLA approaches as much as to CIF. By working with the companies instead of for them, we can all accelerate not just the process of impact assessment, but impact itself.